or

First impressions, Day 1

1. Is it a “seriously cool“ smartphone like

advertised?

2. Can it become my primary smartphone?

Unboxing & hardware

It comes in a pretty cool, small & flat box.

See iPad Air for comparison.

If you grew up in Germany during the 70‘s &

80`s, where anything made outside its borders

was considered inferior, bragging about

“Made in China“ feels a little weird.

Unboxing & hardware

Look & feel is great. The phone is heavier than my HTC One X+, but not too heavy – in fact, the

few extra grams add a feeling of “rock solid work“ to that first impression. Especially the metal

back cover makes it feel more valuable than all those plastic phones – most of them cost more

than the Fairphone‘s 325 Euro price.

Unboxing & hardware

They wrote a lot of stuff and the instructions

are designed nicely, but as always I wouldn‘t

read anything. A smartphone has to be

fully accessible without instructions.

The phone opens super-easily: it makes you

wonder if the back cover won‘t fall off after some

intensive usage. But for now - very cool. Also note

the two SIM slots for two cards.

Unboxing & hardware

Not so cool: the camera and the micro-

phone stick out of the back cover. When the

phone lies flat on a table, it wiggles

massively.

No cables, no earphones, because you have that

stuff already. Probably. At least you get a postcard

with a drawing of a charger .-)

Unboxing & hardware

iPad photo of Fairphone in comparison to my 18-month-old HTC One X+, which was easily 70%

more expensive at the time. They don‘t feel so different that you could say one is an “upper class“

and the other a “middle class“ smartphone. The fairphone can compete.

First experience

Fresh design and a surprisingly fast loading battery. After less than 30 minutes it showed 76% -

I assume the battery was pre-loaded, this cannot be the standard loading time. When you start the

phone, a pretty cool animation with music starts. Watch it here starting at 4:10 min:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW3T5qOjkuE

First experience

Set up is super-easy

as you know it from

other smartphones.

Google Apps are not pre-

installed, though.

It is not so time-consuming as you

might think, all the installations and

updates work pretty fast.

Unique Features

Nice feature – one of the

home screens will give you

quick access to your most

popular apps.

“Enjoy some peace“ – you can access a feature that makes it easy

to completely mute your phone – no emails, no text, no notifications,

no nothing. I think i will use that more during meetings than for

some peace, but it seems useful anyhow.

Photos

Fairphone

Sufficient results, but nothing fancy. More

problems with light/darkness than you are

used to, but manageable.

HTC One X+

Camera

I guess it‘s the hardware that makes a camera expensive, because this one is loaded with

software and features. Panorama photos, multi-angle-pictures, smile recognition, you name it.

Camera

There‘s also a more-than-enough-offer of filters, editing features and whatever you can think of.

I‘d still recommend Instagram, but that‘s the same with my current phone.

Screenshots

Typical Android fun.

You can design your home

screens with apps and

widgets.

I seriously doubt close to

19 hours of battery time,

but my first experiences

are positive.

You can easily attach anything to

a text message, use up to 64GB

SD card, and there‘s a full

power file manager pre-installed.

Problems

I had problems connecting the Fairphone to

both my Windows 7 and Mac computers.

They did not simply recognize the phone

as a USB device.

Although several Android devices were

connected to the same PC already, I had to

find & download new drivers for MT65xx.

Then, phone and SD storage are accessible.

1. Is it a “seriously cool“ smartphone like

advertised?

2. Can it become my primary smartphone?

YES

MAYBE It really seems to be a seriously cool smartphone. Considering this is the first phone of a company

that was funded by people like me through Kickstarter, it is way cooler than I expected. This thing

is a competitive smartphone. And it works just fine. Plus it sends a message: You CAN build & sell

fair products that are actually good AND not overpriced.

I am not sure if it can replace my typical primary smartphone (that always comes from the 500 €+

range) since I use them for business as much as private, and I got very used to HTC sense over

the years. But I am convinced enough that I will try this out in a not-so-busy week soon.